


Fortress Made of Skin

by agatestones



Category: Suits (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatestones/pseuds/agatestones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're fine," Mike said. "You've just been trying to kill Burrows with your brain for the past hour."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortress Made of Skin

Harvey Specter was not a man known for a delicate stomach. He prided himself on it, really: raw squid, fiery curries, Tennessee barbecue, street tacos of dubious provenance. Mike could quote statistics to him on salmonella, E. coli, the sausage-making that went into food-cart sausages, and he would smile the smile of someone who could not be grossed out. It was hilarious and annoying at the same time.

So it was noteworthy that he ignored his dinner while explaining the settlement offer to Burrows. They were in a steak house, and Mike was struggling with food coma, while Harvey waved away his plate like yet another obstacle easily overcome. It was probably a crime against cowmanity that such a magnificent steak should go uneaten. 

Burrows listened to the dollar figures all the way through dessert (Harvey ordered nothing, despite the temptation of spicy chocolate ice cream), and shook hands over the check. The client had enjoyed the meal immensely, and enjoyed the possibility of a settlement even moreso, and did not seem to notice that Harvey was off his feed. Whatever: he was still on his game. Mike provided details on cue, and made Harvey look good.

The truth was, Harvey didn't look so good. He was pale and sweaty at his hairline and the confident smile on his face looked like it took him some effort. Burrows couldn't tell the difference, though, and slapped him on the shoulder (a gesture Harvey hated) and turned to go.The instant the client was out of sight Harvey pulled out a pocket handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He pressed the pristine white cloth to the back of his neck, above his collar, and refolded it deliberately before he put it away. He did not look at Mike.

"You want me to call Ray?" Mike asked, though they were only a block from the office. Harvey didn't look like he wanted an evening stroll. 

"I'm fine," he lied, and stood up. Mike stood with him.

"You're fine," Mike said. "You've just been trying to kill Burrows with your brain for the past hour."

"What?"

"Clenching and unclenching your right hand under the table. He couldn't see it, but I could."

Harvey dismissed that with a gesture and headed toward the front. Mike followed after, baffled and annoyed, and caught up to him at the door. It was raining out, not hard, but enough to make a man pause before he strode out into it in an expensive suit. Mike suspected that this was the kind of restaurant that would call you a taxi, and walk you out to it with a branded umbrella. Maybe they'd let you keep the umbrella, too.

Harvey put a hand on the door lintel. His shoulders were hunched, marring the line of his jacket. The back of his neck was shiny. Something ugly turned over in Mike's mind, like a shark turning around to swim back at you after it's gone by.

He came around Harvey's side and discovered fresh sweat at his temple. Harvey was gray, his dark eyes glassy. His grip on the door lintel was white-knuckle. That ugly thing in Mike's mind did backflips and pirouettes. The hostess gave him a funny look, but didn't intervene.

"Harvey," said Mike carefully, so as not to provoke the outrage that would complete his prediction, "are you going to pass out?"

Harvey said nothing. His shoulders heaved as he breathed. Mike reached out and Harvey's wrist was clammy, the tendons all tight and jumping. Mike was at just the right angle to see the transition as Harvey lost the battle and began to slump. His hand slid down the door lintel and his head fell forward and the intelligence disappeared from his eyes. Mike darted under Harvey's shoulder to support his weight.

"What -- " the hostess gasped, her heels a-clatter as she came out from behind her station. Harvey was not the kind to flop or crumple; he folded neatly to his knees and Mike folded with him. 

"Call 911," Mike gasped, and watched Harvey blink into the middle distance. That was the most frightening part of it, really: nobody home behind those eyes. Harvey was always calculating, always aware of how he presented himself. Mike struggled to loosen his necktie one-handed. "Okay, let's have a seat. What at time for asthma to strike, right?" He was desperately conscious of the scene they were making: restaurant staff afraid it was the food; a crowd of four or five rich people gawking as Mike undid the top button on Harvey's shirt. 

"I'm fine," Harvey murmured, while Mike pushed him back to sit. His neck bared to the air, his ribs worked like a bellows. The smell of his sweat was strong. Mike tugged at his arms to get his jacket off.

Someone pushed forward, hand in Mike's face. "Aspirin," said a woman's voice. Her bracelets made clunking noises as she sat beside him on the floor. "Make him chew it."

"What?" But Mike's brain processed the white hair and the silk dress of the woman, and the tiny white pill in her hand like an opaque diamond. Mike hadn't read the Physician's Desk Reference in about ten years, but the 81mg pill hadn't changed much since then. Blood-thinner, indicated as a first-line defense against -- "God, he's having a heart attack?"

Harvey's brows folded together. "I'm only 41," he protested, his voice a slim and fraying thread, but had no objection while Mike crushed the pill and swiped a drug-dusted thumb past Harvey's lips and against his tongue. Harvey grimaced at the bitter flavor. He said nothing when Mike put a hand to the back of his head and lowered him to the floor, but his eyes were wide: he was paying attention again now the blood to his brain didn't have to fight with gravity. He watched Mike's every gesture, hyperalert, terrified. 

On the one hand, Harvey, himself again. On the other, himself again enough to be aware that he lay helpless on the floor in public, in front of people, in front of Mike.

"Just keep breathing," Mike told him, as he fumbled with the buttons on Harvey's dress shirt. He managed to pop one of them clean off and it skittered away. Harvey did not follow it with his eyes but kept his attention on Mike. "If you make me breathe for you, you will owe me one till the end of time."

Harvey had no retort ready for that. He didn't even try to laugh.

When the ambulance arrived, red lights flashing disorientingly, the front of the restaurant had been cleared and the aspirin was all dissolved. Harvey lay flat on his back with his jacket folded under his head, chest heaving. He glared at the ceiling and protested no further while Mike touched his pulse. The woman in the silk dress stood at the door and held it open for the EMTs. Mike had that song from the Bee Gees racing through his head, inappropriately except it was the rhythm by which amateurs were supposed to administer chest compressions. _Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive_ , said Mike's brain. Harvey's bloodstream pounded out the rhythm at double speed under Mike's thumb.

The ambulance workers were fast and efficient and calm, exactly as you'd hope they would be. The tall one spoke loudly to Harvey, as if it were his hearing not his heart having the trouble, and a little annoyed line appeared on Harvey's forehead. Mike almost missed it as he turned to the other one. "No loss of consciousness, not really. We gave him aspirin, but he'd been ignoring the symptoms for the past hour. I first noticed him clenching his hand at 7:45. He's 41 and like zero body fat, but he wouldn't recognize a vegetable if you hit him over the head with one --"

"Mike," said the patient, a little pained bark of noise. "Shut up."

They slid Harvey onto the stretcher. Mike realized abruptly that they were taking him away. "You have to let me come with you."

"Are you next-of-kin?"

"I, I --" Mike glanced at the woman in the silk dress. They were taking Harvey away, and there was a good chance Mike would be left behind. He said the first thing that came into his head. "He's my husband."

Harvey had an oxygen mask on his face. Whatever protest he made, it sounded like a grunt of pain.

"Okay then, come on." The ambulance people tucked Harvey's hands onto the stretcher, as if he could not do that himself (and maybe he couldn't), and began to wheel him out the door. Mike stood to follow, paused, and stooped quickly to scoop up Harvey's jacket from where it lay discarded.

"Good luck," said the woman in the silk dress. As Mike hurried toward the door, she brushed a tendril of white hair out of her eyes. He hadn't asked her name.

"Thank you," he said, and stumbled out into the light rain to climb into the ambulance.

*

Theoretically, married couples know each other's health insurance information and family history. Mike could, in fact, recite Harvey's health insurance code (more fool he, for letting Mike see the contents of his wallet once) and describe the history of his sports-injury surgeries, but didn't know whether both of Harvey's parents were dead. If dead, did one of them die of a heart attack? Um.

Probably people don't just have heart attacks that young without some kind of family history. "He had a great-uncle with angina," Mike lied, "but that's not what he died of."

The nurses didn't scoff at his ignorance; they just took what they could get and made marks on their little digital clipboards and pushed him out of the way. A host of people had descended on Harvey, plucking and poking at him from all directions. In the center of it, the patient, his hair mussed and the whites visible all the way around his pupils. His mouth was open as if to cry out, but in the din of emergency Mike couldn't hear any noise he made.

Banished to a corner of the room, Mike watched as someone in scrubs lifted a glinting tool and wondered in idle horror whether they were just going to cut him open right there, whether Mike was going to see his heart thumping in his chest like an ugly purple fist. The shiny tool angled down and Mike realized they were scissors and they cut the sleeves of Harvey's open dress shirt as quick as anything, just snip snip and the expensive fabric fell away like shredded paper. His undershirt came off the same way, one long cut up his belly to his neck, like a foreshadowing of surgery. They cut the laces off his shoes and removed them and unbuckled his belt. Harvey lay there half-naked under the bright lights, five or eight people hunched over him intently. They touched his face and his chest and his wrists, stuck him with needles and attached him to wires. Harvey was not able to object to any of it.

Mike stood there with nothing to do, fists mashing the fabric in his hands -- Harvey's jacket. He made a conscious effort to relax his grip, smoothing out the wrinkles he'd made, and folded it over his arm. The weight of it: Harvey never carried anything in the front pockets of his jackets, because he really was that fussy, but he did stuff odd items into the breast pocket. Mike reached in and fished out a cell phone, and with that it occurred to him for the first time that Harvey suffering a heart attack was something bigger than just what was in this emergency room.

Clients would find out, colleagues, rivals. People before whom Harvey preferred a posture of strength. Only depraved assholes dive in for the kill when a man's flat on his back from illness, but the world of corporate law was full of depraved assholes. What would Harvey do in a situation like this? Harvey would pre-empt the existing narrative and substitute one of his own. Harvey would make sure his message got out there first. Mike scrolled through the Contacts list and tried to make a plan.

With an apologetic glance at the hubbub in the middle of the room, he ducked out into the hallway to place his first call. It didn't surprise him what Speed Dial #1 was, although it was a number he'd never seen before. It rang only once.

"This is Jessica."

Her crisp voice on the line, as if she never took off her work persona. Mike had never seen her flustered, and suspected he never would. "Hi, uh, this is Mike Ross. I'm with Harvey."

It was early enough she might still be in the office, although that seemed unlikely. She asked, cool, "Something wrong with the Burrows settlement?"

"No, uh, no, it went fine. Harvey had a heart attack afterwards and we're in the hospital."

"WHAT." Mike pulled the receiver away from his ear.

"Sorry, that came out wrong." Mike breathed in and out, and tried again. "We're in the hospital, he's had aspirin, and they're doing stuff to him now. He never passed out, so, that's a good sign? Anyway I figured he would want you to -- "

"What hospital."

Mike listened to her regain control. He admired that overpowering drive, almost as much as he feared it. The noise of the emergencies going on around him became overwhelming and he stuffed a finger in his ear to be able to talk into the phone. "Memorial, on 54th and I don't know what. West 54th. Is his brother named Barry? That's the next name on speed-dial."

"Don't make any more calls," said Jessica, crisp now. "I'll do that. Just stay with him and wait for me."

As far as Mike knew, Jessica could not perform cardiac surgery. "Okay," he said, and she hung up on him.

He stood there listening to the empty air coming across the cellular channels long enough that the phone hung itself up for him. He held onto that little rectangle of plastic and glass tightly. Jessica probably knew best. Jessica probably would be able to make the call more diplomatically than Mike just had, and tell Harvey's kid brother that yes, heart attacks _do_ run in his family. Jessica probably knew that Speed Dial #2 was Barry Bonds, or Barry Manilow, or somebody not related to Harvey at all. 

Mike slipped the phone back into its jacket pocket and tripped back across the hallway toward the room where they were doing things to Harvey. He shared that hallway with too many people: beds parked along stretches of wall, one or two people in wheelchairs looking bored. He was just coming up to the windowed door into Harvey's room when a tight knot of people came barrelling along in the opposite direction. "The fuck out the way," someone snarled, not with malice but with a curt disinterest in Mike's needs. He flattened himself next to the door and they zoomed past, six sets of scrubs around a white-and-red wheeled bed. Mike averted his eyes the moment he realized he was looking at blood.

He came around into the nurses' bullpen to see into the theatre where Harvey lay. More people were with him now, a handful of people in identical white coats hanging back while the rest still worked over Harvey's torso. They hadn't cut him open yet; or maybe they were preparing for that, and would take him away somewhere Mike couldn't follow. Blinds hung down from the top of the window, but not so low they obscured the view. If someone tried to close them, he could know things were going bad.

It seemed like they were talking to Harvey, as they took away dark red vials and stuffed something -- a clot-busting cocktail? Beta-blockers? Something new Mike hadn't had the time to read up on? -- into his veins. He lay still, head back on the elevated backrest, as if the oxygen mask were made of lead. He lay in profile so that Mike could only see one of his eyes.

Mike had done plenty of time in hospitals, in surgical waiting rooms and over-crowded emergency rooms and one terrifying time in an ICU. He'd looked through plenty of windows at a weak and frightened patient, and kept her together with nothing but calm and attention. That position of support was normal to him. This whole situation was definitely not normal to Harvey, and his eye when it struck Mike in the window was bright, wary, ashamed. Because having a heart attack was some kind of failure of will? Because Harvey really was that fucked up, and couldn't stand the idea that anybody who mattered might see him as weak. He wouldn't be able to hear (and certainly would not listen to) any argument Mike made to the contrary, so Mike said nothing. He didn't need to say anything. He lifted a hand and put it against the window glass and gave Harvey what he had to give.

Mike stood at the window, his fingertips pressed hard against the glass. Mike was not a doctor and Mike was not a stent and Mike was not a thrombolytic drug in a syringe. Mike was a pair of eyeballs and a set of greasy fingerprints and a gaze like the Brooklyn Bridge, a massive span of attention. Granite, concrete, steel cables like a spiderweb, like the sinews of a hand outstretched to a drowning man -- Mike reached through the glass with his force of will, under the blinds and past all the people hovering around Harvey. He provided Harvey the power the man himself couldn't muster.

Blinking against the sweat that rolled down into his eye, Harvey drank in that attention. Maybe he understood it, or maybe he didn't and just accepted the idea that somebody on this planet _really_ wanted him alive for a little bit longer. Or maybe he just relaxed to see a familiar face, surrounded as he was by sharp-voiced strangers with needles. He did not break his gaze as he answered their questions, or as they flipped off the oxygen mask and replaced it with cannula. They tucked the plastic cord around his ear and he angled his chin to keep Mike in view.

A hot tight dizziness stole over Mike. He tried to nod to Harvey and discovered his forehead was already resting on the glass, as if he were trying to mash himself through it and into the room. His breath made steam and made it harder to see, and his palm squeaked as he wiped it away. Harvey had turned his head a little and they stared at one another and by some transitive property of sight Harvey became calmer while Mike began to tremble. For the first time the question swam into his head: What if he dies? and Mike knew he could not keep that question out of his expression. He was a terrible liar, as Harvey loved to remind him. So rather than let Harvey see that uncertainty, he stopped thinking and made all questions go away.

His ribs expanded and shrank in the same rhythm as Harvey's. They blinked in tandem. Mike's hearing wound down till the busy emergency room disappeared behind him. He was there, with Harvey, and that was all. Harvey's eyes widened and Mike's did too. Harvey opened his mouth as if to say something -- surely not to the doctors, surely directly to Mike -- and Mike licked his lips, ready with a pert rejoinder. A bead of sweat stole down Harvey's temple and ran past his ear and trickled slowly down toward his jaw and Mike felt the itch of it on his own face, the irritation of a droplet that hangs and hangs and won't fall. Mike's breastbone began to ache and he pressed his forearm against his midsection and his free hand clenched and unclenched without conscious volition. 

*

It was not clear to him, after, how long he stood that way. The following day his hand was sore, the moons of fingernail marks red in his palm. He didn't even realize time was passing until someone tapped him on the shoulder and scared the daylights out of him. He flailed his arm wildly, dimly cognizant of Harvey's jacket still folded over it, and some poor intern got a face full of gabardine.

"Sorry, god, sorry."

The intern didn't seem hurt or offended. "You can go in," he said. Mike frowned at him, stumped, and the guy provided context: "He's stabilized, so you can go in and sit with your husband if you want."

Mike had forgotten he'd claimed that right. He glanced into the room where Harvey lay and discovered that the cluster of medical personnel had left. Just one person stood at Harvey's side, tapping at a portable computer. Whatever sense of emergency had been in effect, it was clearly over.

Mike came out of the nurses' station and marched into the room and did what he would do with his grandmother: pulled up a stool, sat, and tucked his forehead against Harvey's temple. "Hey," he said in Harvey's ear, low. "Hey."

There was no quip from Harvey. Mike grabbed his hand: it was clammy. Their fingers entwined automatically. Whoever it was in the white coat with the portable computer launched in on a prepared speech, all bedside manner and not a lot of answers at this point. Harvey was too young for a heart attack, too healthy, too athletic. He didn't smoke. He didn't drink _that_ much. Mike half-listened to the rain of explanatory jargon like soothing legal patter and wondered whether Harvey had managed to get through this much of his life with an undetected valve defect or genetic syndrome. Maybe he _did_ have a family history of it. 

But honestly, it didn't matter. Harvey was here, pale under bright lights, his skin hot, alive. Mike was with him.

He smelled like starched bed linens and the unpleasant sharp stink of antiseptics and underneath it all sweat, a low earthy smell. They'd stripped him all the way naked at some point and covered him up to the waist with a sheet, though it was hard to tell whether they'd destroyed his many-thousand-dollar suit in the process of saving his life. A couple of sensors were stuck to his chest amid the sparse brown hairs. Despite the repetitive tones of the heart monitor, Mike slid his free hand up that chest to feel for himself: good, solid muscle, working away, rhythmic and able if still a little fast. Harvey's breathing was steady, but Mike could hear his own shakiness.

"I'm fine," said Harvey, with the ghost of that impatience he'd had half an hour ago, at the restaurant.

Mike lifted his head for his first really good look. Harvey had lost the shame somewhere in the middle of losing his clothes, and didn't fear Mike's attention. "You're fine," Mike said. He was so close Harvey had to tip his chin back to see Mike properly. His eyes were a little glassy, the lids heavy, as whatever sedatives they'd given him worked through his nervous system. Mike breathed, "You eat ventricular tachycardia for breakfast."

"You know it," Harvey said, as devilish as you can be when you're too weak to raise your head off the pillow. He leaned toward Mike with a sleepy little smile and they rubbed their faces together like cats. 

Mike chuckled against his cheekbone. "You think _I'm_ a bad liar." Without the window glass in their way, they could sit there forehead-to-forehead and make sense of it all. Mike felt eyelashes flap against his cheek as Harvey blinked. They fell silent and turned into pure tactile creatures, skin and pores and breath, pressure and friction and the tickle of fine hairs. Mike found his heart racing, not from fear or from empathy, but the primitive thrill of touch. It was like sex without the sex, or -- it got at something remote in him, something from early childhood, that intensity of experience when you're a toddler and an adult can pick you up and make you feel safe without a word.

There was probably no other way on earth the Great Harvey Specter would let someone thumb his eyelids or stroke his biceps, certainly not in public. But Mike did that, and bumped noses with him, and grinned at the feeling of fingertips on his own back, under his jacket. Harvey's jacket lay on the floor, maybe wrinkled beyond repair, maybe its matching pants in tatters, and Mike would gladly destroy the whole wardrobe in defense of the body that wore them. Mike blew cool air over Harvey's neck and felt an unshaved jaw and smooth lips against his forehead. He ran his blunt fingernails up the hairs on Harvey's forearm and waited for the moment when Harvey regained his pride and pulled away.

But all Harvey did was make a soft little hum in his throat, something Mike could feel where his chest mashed against Harvey's shoulder. They were easy together, shameless, animal. Mike could feel the wires crossing in his head, where affection turned into attraction and that was a bad place, it was a totally wrong idea, and anyway Harvey would never go for it. Mike kept himself under control. He could see the exhaustion in Harvey's face, the dull smudges under his eyes. Sedatives, right. Standard protocol. Totally not responsible for his actions right now.

"Go ahead and catch some sleep," he said, lips at Harvey's ear. "I'll keep watch."

"Hm," said Harvey doubtfully, but his eyelids were already lowering. And so that was how Jessica found them when she arrived five minutes later: Mike pressed up against his senior partner's naked chest, said senior partner in a pleasant doze. Which, on the whole, was for the best, because otherwise there was a good chance that Jessica's mere presence might have given Harvey a second heart attack.

*

Which is to say, Mike was handling surprises badly by this time of night. He was peering past the tent of Harvey's covered toes at the wall, composing the Burrows settlement in his head, when the door flew open and Jessica Pearson strode in.

Jessica Pearson. Jessica Pearson with a face like a thundercloud. Jessica Pearson _in her jammies_. She wore untied running shoes and plaid flannel sweat pants and a Howard University t-shirt, with marks of rain on her shoulders. She held her keys and wallet in one hand and held the door out of her way with the other. 

"Oh, you came," said Mike stupidly as he yanked his head up. He tried to establish a bit of professional distance from Harvey and discovered that their twined fingers wouldn't let him go far. The pull on Harvey's arm managed to wake him up and he blinked at Jessica drowsily.

"What the hell are you doing here."

"I called her," Mike admitted. Harvey laboriously rolled his head over to one side so he could frown at Mike to maximum effect. It didn't work so well when you couldn't sit up straight. Mostly he just looked addled, but Mike fell back on habit, and argued his position. " _Yes_ , Harvey, I'm going to rat you out to Jessica when you have a fucking _heart attack_ , hello. I didn't even call Donna yet, so be grateful. I'll let you decide whether she should roast, slow-boil, or fricassee your unhealthy ass for not telling her the instant you felt funny."

A smirk flitted across Harvey's mouth. "You love my unhealthy ass."

Mike pinked under Jessica's impassive attention. She let the door close behind her and eyed the monitors that indicated Harvey's continuing attachment to life.

"Are they admitting you?" she asked, not surprised any longer. Harvey grimaced and averted his gaze. Mike noted the redness of his own fingertips, and realized that Harvey was gripping him so hard the blood flow was cut off. If Harvey was carrying that much tension in his torso even now, even on all the sedatives they'd given him --

"They're waiting on the CT and some blood chemistry," Mike supplied, and discovered to his dismay that whoever it was who had told him that had quietly left the room at some point. Mike ran back through his auditory memory to come up with the details: "The right ventricle went apeshit due to some kind of ischemia, but they were able to convert him back to a normal rhythm with only drugs."

"Apeshit being a technical term," Harvey remarked, as if he could deflect even this into a joke. Jessica would not be turned aside.

"Did you tell them about your father?" she asked.

"No," said Harvey, and turned his face away. There wasn't a lot of movement he could do, but he could point his chin at the wall and shut everyone out. Most of what Mike knew about Harvey's father boiled down to the fact that he had an incredibly loyal and protective son. Mike didn't even know his name, much less whether he'd died of a heart attack.

Like Harvey needed another thing to stress him out right now. "Hey, I'm going to fetch that doctor, see what the holdup is." Head down, Mike extricated his hand from Harvey's grip. Jessica stood like a lighthouse, her eyes exposing all the crags and fissures of the people in front of her. And Mike thought -- he didn't know what he was thinking. He resented that her presence was making Harvey tense again. He missed the unselfconscious closeness they'd had, and was beginning to face the reality that Harvey would be ashamed of it, of his own weakness, and might never allow it to be spoken of after today. Pugnacious, territorial, but still riding the high of tactile intimacy, Mike kissed Harvey's forehead and stood. "I'll be right back." The fingers on his waist fell away.

The chances were nonzero that the minute he left the room they would start yelling at one another, or that Jessica would yell and Harvey would hunker down like a splenetic porcupine and set all the monitor alarms to shrieking. Honestly, between pity and yelling Harvey would choose yelling every time. This might perhaps be a contributing factor to his current medical predicament.

Mike put his hand on the door to go and it opened into him from the other side. Someone -- the same someone? Damn those white doctor coats -- walked in with a digital clipboard in hand and started talking to Harvey.

"We're ready to take you upstairs to the cardiac unit." She was a woman, the person in the white coat. She had a round face and Asian eyes and her hair up in a ponytail and a Bugs Bunny pin on her lapel. She turned to Mike and he realized he had never more than glanced at her till now. She said, "You'll be asked to wait outside the CT room, but once he's admitted you can sit with him. Spouses get a fair amount of leeway."

Spouses. Mike was pretty sure he was in violation of federal law, fraudulently claiming the right to medical information that was otherwise private. But what the hell, Mike had a ton of fraud under his belt already. He nodded and followed her as she crossed the room to fuss with the monitors and alarms that were attached to Harvey.

Jessica had retreated a bit, and stood a little behind Harvey's head, out of view. It was the perfect location from which to cry without the patient realizing it was going on. It was possible Harvey had never seen her cry, and he was not going to see it today. She dashed tears from her cheeks briskly, and there was no way she hadn't noticed the doctor's phrasing. Mike eyed her as he sidled up to Harvey's hip. She was pretty tough, and pulled herself together in the span of one breath. She returned Mike's gaze with calculating intensity.

Mike was distracted. Now that they were not alone in the room he did not expect the hand that reached out for his beltloop, yanked on it a little, and slid up his chest as soon as Mike moved close enough. One hot hand, palm flat, pressed against his ribs as if he weren't wearing any clothes at all.

This would explain why he was not paying attention to what the doctor said, or how many other people came in on her orders, or anything at all in fact except for Harvey's touch on his body and his own responding grip on Harvey's biceps. They were doing it front of _everybody_ , and Mike felt the thrill and the blush radiating up his neck. Dark eyes traveled his face, alert now as they hadn't been before. He heard Jessica interrogating the doctor, and answers that came in a gentle voice, and the people rearranging the wires attached to Harvey as they prepared to move him, but Mike was back in narrow-focus, just him and Harvey and the connection between them.

"Okay, let's go," said the doctor, and Harvey's bed began to shift. Startled, Mike took a breath, let go and and got out of the way. As Harvey was pushed toward the door, his hand slid off Mike's body and downward till it dangled off the bed.

The doors swung behind them after they went, and Mike watched through the little window as they turned and headed toward the elevator. Without the sound of the heart monitor, the only noise in the room was of Mike's shocky breathing. He stood stupid that way, arms at his sides, till behind him Jessica spoke.

"Go on," she said, and scared the crap out of Mike. He'd forgotten she was there. She was herself again, business-like despite her casual clothes. It was almost possible to forget he'd seen her crying only a few minutes ago. "Go be with your _husband_."

Oh, that. "Uh," he said. He shuffled his feet and discovered he was kicking Harvey's coat where it lay on the floor. Mike bought himself some time by crouching to pick it up. But when he stood again, Jessica was all calm eyebrows and a hand on her hip. "It seemed like a good idea to be sure he had somebody with him." Mike pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the hallway, at the bed that was long since out of view and maybe wouldn't wait for him at the elevator. 

"Give me his cell phone," she said. Mike fished it out and gave it to her and immediately she started dialing a number. Mike went to the door and pushed it open.

"So just," he said over his shoulder, "for the record, we're not married, we are not in any way sexually involved, nor has he ever so much as looked at me funny."

It was possible that such a statement had been true yesterday, but Mike was pretty sure it was no longer true as of today. He would have to wait till morning to find out if it would be true again tomorrow.

Jessica said again, the phone to her ear, "Go on." This time she left out the sarcasm. As poker-faced as she could be, it was impossible to tell what she thought of the situation, or of Harvey, or of Mike himself. 

When Jessica says jump, you ask how high. He skedaddled into the hallway without a backward glance. Harvey was waiting for him at the elevator, alert and focused despite the scurry of the medical people around him. His brown eyes rested on Mike like a spotlight as the distance between them dwindled. The bell rang and the doors slid open and Mike was just in time to slot himself in again at Harvey's side before the whole dog and pony show rolled onto the elevator.


End file.
